This week, I made the executive decision to go ahead and actually read the entire Furniture: World Styles from Classical to Contemporary book instead of merely skimming through it. Because you know what? I realized upon turning its pages that it gives me the closest simulacrum of being in a museum that I’ve had in a looooooong time and I reaaaaaaaly appreciate it. It’s a sumptuous book with so many deliciously esoteric details about every piece in every photograph and my mind swims with the flood of furnishing patois. Farouche, fauteuil, rocaille, poudreuse, bonheurs du jour etc. At least those six months worth of Babbel lessons taught me how to pronounce things. Also I can now tell the difference between a Chippendale and a Roentgen. Achievement unlocked. I guess.
The bulk of my study focused on the period between 1600-1750, and tell you what, I thought I hated rococo before but now I can confidently descant on my dislike in more detailed terms. All those bulbous bombe-shaped commodes covered in gilded gesso and asymmetrical escutcheons make me sick. Then they have the gall to festoon entire halls and walls with creepy cherubs and enough S and C scrolls to bankrupt a warring nation. Commodes will never not resemble the Horta from Star Trek, which, obviously, is a far more sophisticated creature than a fucking commode.
On that note, I happened to joyfully notice that HBO Max is now streaming Barry Lyndon (1975), which is definitely the most underappreciated of Stanley Kubrick’s films and it does my heart good to know that it is open to a larger audience now (I was lucky enough to have seen it for the first time a few years ago on Filmstruck before it died and rose like a phoenix as Criterion Channel five months later THANK GOD). Barry Lyndon is set during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) and is bursting with fucking rococo stylings, but the film is such an excellent and skillfully-executed capsule of artistic photography and mise-en-scene that I don’t even hate it for three hours. GO WATCH IT.
To cement my hatred of all things rococo, I learned that Louis XIV stuffed the Salle de Glaces at Versailles with silver furniture. SOLID SILVER. Giant candelabras, chairs, tables, statues, goddamn commodes. 200 pieces, weighing 20 tons. All in rococo. There is some justice knowing that the colossal jerk only got to enjoy it for seven years before it all got sent to the mint. Denmark, however, still has quite a bit of silver furniture to this day, lest you think only France was capable of being a total dick. Every time I learn something new about French kings, I invariably say out loud NO WONDER THERE WAS A REVOLUTION.
Louis XV wasn’t much better, as he continued the tradition of spreading rococo across Europe, where everyone and their cabinet-making brother were crafting imitations of this atrocious style. It wasn’t until Louis XVI that furniture caught a break and people started preferring the Neoclassical style, which, you must know, isn’t any less fancy, but is mercifully more restrained with its clean lines and geometric tendencies. When rich people started taking years-long trips through Europe, they gawked at Roman ruins and strived to re-create the items they saw in artwork at Herculaneum and later, Pompeii. Fluted columns, caryatids, urns, and laurel garlands were suddenly on-trend. I was glad to literally turn the page on rococo when we got to the latter half of the 1700s.
One badass development that came out of the 1700s was steel Tula furniture. Catherine the Great understandably obsessed over this stuff and the craftsmen in the imperial armoury town of Tula, Russia were commissioned to make tables and stools and other objets d’arts using gunsmith skills. The decoration was cut and facetted like jewels and chiseled and blued and inlaid like all those fabulous parade weapons you might see at a museum. It is the most Russian thing I’ve ever heard… other than anything by Boris Pasternak of course.
As we sneak up on the 1800s, we notably see the emergence of the American “Federal” style. Once we got the ding-dang Revolution out of the way, craftsmen could finally focus on developing a style that wasn’t a wholesale copy of European shite. Mostly, though, we used different woods, favored straight/flat lines instead of curves, emphasized wood grain instead of inlays and marquetry, and carved or emblazoned eagles all over everything. Because eagles.
I can't be sure if it's the inherent bias of being an American that makes me nod with low-key approval at most Federal-style pieces, or if it's just plain elegant AF. Just picture the décor in the White House, you know? It's totally nice.
I cannot close without a real shout-out to the great German cabinetmaker David Roentgen, who graced the furniture world with his awesomeness in the mid-to-late 1700s. Like, I cannot even explain properly. He's probably the best cabinetmaker who ever lived. Marie Antoinette stanned his shit, Catherine the Great stanned his shit, and he was eventually made the court furnisher for Prussia. He didn't make your everyday secretaires. They were mechanical masterpieces, the wooden Transformers of their day. His designs are totally worth descending into a google rabbit hole.
I'm looking forward to moving more deeply into the 1800s this coming week. I bet there's some good stuff in there, mostly because I won't need to stare at any rococo anymore.
Wait, what? There's a rococo revival?
*stares blankly*
*takes deep breath*
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